


Wanted

by kittydesade



Category: Sucker Punch (2011)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 23:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And just when Amber thought she'd finally, even in the midst of this callous hell, finally found someone who wanted her for herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majesdane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/gifts).



When Amber first came around she didn't know where to look. Her eyes locked on the floor, finally, and didn't lift until she was left alone in the bunk room for all of three minutes. Then she stole a quick look around and dropped her gaze again as the rest of the girls came crowding in before lights out.

She didn't cry the first night. Too overwhelmed to cry, she lay back and stared at the ceiling and wondered what on earth she was doing here of all places. Out of all the homes for runaways and all the places she could have found herself, it seemed unreal that she'd end up here. Her parents didn't want her, they wouldn't come looking for her, they'd wanted a boy. But she could have ended up in juvenile detention, she could have ended up in a bedlam house. And the judge had sent her here. 

It was three days before she found out why. The mayor had bribed the judge to put her in, he'd seen her walking around the hallways of the courthouse to and from the holding cell and when she was convicted of theft he persuaded the judge to send her here on probation instead of to detention.

"Every girl must have a dance," the Madame Gorski told her. She didn't know what Gorski was, Madam or dance instructor or headmistress. A little bit of all three. Amber kept her chin tucked. "And every girl must dance it well. You cannot dance if your chin is stuck to your throat."

Cold fingers slipped under her chin and forced her head up. Amber tried to unfocus her eyes so that she couldn't see the judgment on everyone's faces, but it didn't work well with Madame Gorski's wild-eyed intensity. 

"Are you useful to us?" she demanded. "Or will you be discarded even from here?" 

That night, Amber did cry. Into her pillow, until she finally passed out from want of tears.

  


  


  


  


Madame Gorski threatened to put her in a special kind of collar to force her head up. "Like a horse," she said. "Under the bearing rein. Do you want that?"

"No, Madam Gorski," Amber whispered. 

"Then _look up._ "

Amber looked up. She held her head up so stiff and high that Madame Gorski wasn't happy with that either and told her not to look as though she had a pole for a backbone. That first session was harder than anything she'd ever done, harder than school, harder than living with her foster parents. She came back to the bunk room and cried into her pillow again, quickly, before the other girls came back from practice or dinner. She learned that lesson years ago, if you let someone see you cry they could hold it over you for the rest of your life, or at least for the rest of the time your lives intersected.

"Don't let her get to you."

Amber squeaked. The form that crashed down on the bed next to her was dressed in stretched-out satin and see-through stockings, faded black corset. She had a smile that disregarded their surroundings and she stretched her legs out along the bed, crossing her ankles. "Let who g--"

"Madame Gorski. She's like that with everyone. Especially if she thinks they've got talent." The other girl's eyes traveled up and down Amber's body.

She crossed her arms over her chest, curled her knees up. Other people had looked at her like that before, but not girls her own age. "Talent?"

"Mm-hmm." The other girl shrugged. "You've got talent. You could really make it, you know? I mean, make it out of here."

"Make it out of here?" God, she sounded stupid. She didn't mean to sound stupid. Amber scrubbed at her face with one hand. "You mean, um. Dancing."

"Well, I don't mean working in the kitchen, yeah, dancing." But the other girl said it with such a smile, almost a laugh, that she couldn't really take it meanly. "I'm Blondie." 

Amber uncurled a little. "But you're not..."

She shrugged, flipped her decidedly dark bangs out of her face with a habitual gesture. "It's meant to be ironic. I think. What's your name?"

"Amber." Which wasn't meant to be ironic, as far as she knew. Or anything. It was just a name. 

Blondie nodded. "Amber. I like that. Suits you."

She uncurled a little more. Blondie wasn't leaving, but she wasn't bringing up the crying or the Madame Gorski yelling at her, either. She might be just being friendly, which would be a first in all of Amber's time in and out of homes. People weren't friendly to each other in general, and pretty girls especially weren't nice to other pretty girls. It took away from the power and attention you had. "You think so?"

"Mm-hmm." She sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "It's like, you've got this protective shell around you. But it's beautiful. And no one knows it's a protective shell but you. 'cause you're all safe in the middle. That's what amber is."

She was making that up. Amber knew the other girl was making that up, but she was trying to make her feel better, and that alone was rare enough to make her smile.

  


  


  


  


Okay, so it helped a little. Blondie became her dance partner, supporting her with a look and a nod, or a gesture when Amber forgot to hold her head up or her shoulders back or work on her turn-out. In return, Amber looked out for Blondie when the other girl wanted to sneak an extra cookie or piece of cake at dinner, and then they shared it after lights out in the bunk room. 

"This can't be good for us." But that didn't stop Amber from enjoying the icing and licking it off every one of her fingers. 

Blondie grinned as she watched her, having finished her half of the cake. "Are you kidding? This is totally good for us. It gives us energy, you know? And it keeps us..."

She trailed off and Amber stared very hard at the plate instead of at her new friend. Kept us happy, that's what she'd meant to say. Kept us from thinking about where we really were. Like we could sneak cake out of our parents' kitchen, or somewhere else safe. It gave them a way to have something like a normal life. The normal stolen pleasure of breaking a diet instead of breaking one of the rules that could have them locked in the janitor's closet for a whole day. 

Amber reached out, her first two fingers still sticky, and gripped Blondie's hand tight. "You're right. It is good for us."

And just like that Blondie grinned at her, as though nothing had ever been wrong. "Exactly." 

When the cake was gone they stretched out on the bed and under the covers. Both of them were too wired to go back to sleep, and after a few weeks of this Amber had learned how little sleep she could get away with and still be able to dance the next day. Plus, there were all kinds of makeup tricks she'd picked up from Blondie. How to hide the bags under her eyes. Or a bruise.

"This isn't because of the assistant DA, is it?" Amber knew it was, but she figured she'd give Blondie the chance to lie about it, badly, so both of them knew what had happened and they didn't have to bring it out and look it in the face. 

And, sure, it took Blondie a second to answer. She shifted under the covers and tucked her side of the blanket tighter around her shoulders, and looked down when she finally did say something. "Nah. He's a pushover, I can handle him. He's just used to arguing in court. Like whether or not he's a prosecutor matters here."

Which it did. Blue kept out the favorites for people like the mayor, the DA's office, vice cops. They got high discounts and their pick of the girls, and Blue got to stay in business. It was obvious, really, once Amber had taken a good hard look at it all. The way the mayor looked at her, it probably wasn't long before she was on Blue's list for bribery detail.

"What's it for, then?" Give Blondie a chance to come up with something happy to talk about. Amber couldn't think of anything, but Blondie usually could. "I mean, you don't usually do these things unless we have something to celebrate." 

Something to celebrate, like making it through an evening with a prosecutor who was a mean drunk, and who enjoyed Blue's liquor cabinet. Or like coming through an evening of being slobbered on by an bureaucrat on a power trip who was three times her size and liked pinning her down with his weight. 

"We're celebrating your six month anniversary," Blondie told her, distracting her from the memory. 

"I... six months? Really?" Amber sat up, forgetting that the first rule of sneaking was never make yourself more visible than you had to. Blondie pulled her back down. "Six months?"

"Mm-hmm." She laced her fingers through Amber's, squeezed the other girl's hand and smiled.

Amber couldn't smile back. She was stuck on the thought that someone should have gotten her by now, that if anyone on the outside really wanted her they would have found her and taken her out of this place by now. Which meant that no one wanted her, no one outside of this horrible place even knew she was alive or cared to find out. The cake lodged in her throat. Blondie's hand untangled from hers and the next thing she knew Amber had her face cupped in both hands and Blondie was wiping the tears away. 

"Hey. Hey, now, wha... what did I do? What did I say? Baby..." She tried to hug Amber, and it worked in the way of being a hug. Amber dove into the other girl's arms to cry because no one could hear her broken, gulping sobs. "Amber..."

"It's not..." She couldn't talk over the sobbing, but she couldn't breathe either. Getting it all under control left her gasping and sucking down air. "It's not that. It's not you. It's this _place._ It's everything, it's been six months? Why has it been six months? I shouldn't be here, I'm not supposed to be here. I was supposed to be out of here by now..."

Blondie knew. Blondie always knew. "Oh, honey. They don't come for us once we're in here, Blue keeps us too well guarded for that. He's too in with the rich and powerful." 

It didn't help. Amber shook her head, and it sounded stupid even to say it. "If someone really..." The words stuck in her throat with the cake. "They'd find a way."

"Oh, sweetie." Blondie kissed her forehead, kissed her tears. Brushed her hair a bit. A couple of false starts, but she didn't have anything to say to make it better. Which only convinced Amber that there wasn't anything to say. Six months down, and who knew how long to go. Till Blue sold her off to someone to replace her with another, prettier girl. It wouldn't take long for that to happen. No one ever wanted to keep her around. "That's not true," Blondie protested, bringing Amber to realize she'd been babbling out loud. "I want you around."

Amber couldn't refute that without sounding like an idiot, but she did give Blondie a skeptical look. The other girl wrapped her arms around Amber's waist and one leg around hers. 

"I want you," Blondie told her, and it wasn't until her lips closed on Amber's that she realized how many ways Blondie meant that. "I promise."

  


  


  


  


It felt like everybody knew at first. The way Blondie's fingers brushed against hers when they walked in the halls, the way she clapped and cheered for her in dance rehearsals. Even Madame Gorski commented that Amber was finally turning into quite the little dancer, even that sounded like the threat of knowing and telling on Blue. Not that he'd mind. But he'd turn them into an even bigger show for the paying customers, and Amber hated that thought. This was just for her and Blondie. It didn't involve anyone else.

But it helped. And after a while the feeling of being watched faded as much as it ever did in this place, where so much of what they did was scrutinized. The girls didn't care. Madame Gorski didn't care.

And Blondie made it better. All the little things she did, a smile or a tap on the shoulder, it kept her going until they could sneak into each other's bunks after lights out and curl up. Soft kisses and whispering, so that even when Amber had to put up with the heavy bulk of the mayor suffocating her during the early part of the evening she could come back to Blondie soothing it all away. Reminding her that pleasure didn't have to come at the cost of breath or freedom or comfort. And that not everyone wanted to take something from her.

"You're perfect," Blondie whispered into her neck, fingers tracing down the lines of her sweat-damp body. "Just the way you are. Let me show you how perfect, 'kay?" 

All the hands groping at her, at all the girls, all day. She and Blondie never groped at each other, it was always wanted and always gentle. The roughhousing and playful shoving stopped under the covers. It was like Blondie knew Amber couldn't stand to be touched that way. Maybe she felt the same, too.

And then Baby Doll came. And Amber was jealous of the way Blondie looked at her, but not the way she talked about her, and Baby Doll did have the best escape plan. 

She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be on the outside. Blondie could. She wouldn't stop talking about it until Amber kissed her to make her shut up under the blankets. 

"Sorry," Blondie grinned sheepishly. "Too excited?"

"Maybe a little. Someone could hear you." 

"No one's going to hear me," Blondie kissed her back. "No one hears us when you're all wriggling on the blankets and moaning..."

Amber blushed. Hard to tell with her coloring and in the dimness of lights out, but she felt it, and she knew Blondie did too, her cheek against the other girl's forehead. "I bet they do. They just don't say anything." 

If anyone heard them talking about their escape plans, no one said anything about that, either. They got halfway there. They got the first two items on the list. 

And things went wrong somehow. Amber stumbled out of the kitchen in tears, finding her way back to the bunk room by habit. Poor Rocket. Poor Sweet Pea, who had to live with it now, at least Rocket was out of here. Blondie wasn't there. She'd have to catch her after the show and explain, and right now it was all she could do to pull it together long enough to get changed. It could still be all right. After tonight's dances, she and Baby Doll and Blondie could all escape together. Even Sweet Pea, if she could make it.

They wouldn't escape. Blue knew the whole thing. It had gotten back to him and now he had a gun and they weren't going to get out of this room alive, let alone out of the club. Blue made sure they knew exactly who to thank for that. Amber didn't know what to say, not that she was given the chance.

The tight stone of Blondie's betrayal in her stomach hurt worse than the bullet.


End file.
